MSI 890FXA-GD70 review -
The SB850 Southbridge

The SB850 Southbridge

The new Southbridge is a nice update over the older SB7x0 series. The Southbridge ASIC is always used for peripheral connectivity like your HDDs, audio, USB, PATA and so on. The biggest changes then. Well firstly, we see the first chipset vendor actually implementing SATA 6G (SATA3), this new update of your SATA connectors will increase the bandwidth on the SATA controller from 3 towards 6 GBit/sec. Now for regular HDDs that is not really very important. But with the tremendous rise of fast SSD drives this really is a large plus. Typically we get 3000 Mbit/s : 8 = 375 MB/sec bandwidth minus tolerances and random occurrences. SATA3 is doubling it up, as such we get 6000 Mbit/sec : 8 = 750 MB/sec of available bandwidth for your storage devices. As you can understand, with SSDs getting faster and faster that's just a much warmed and welcomed increase of bandwidth. Also do not forget RAID performance, which can see massive benefits of the updated SATA interface.

There's more to the SB850 though, it will now allow you to connect up-to 14 USB 2.0 devices, of course comes with support for PATA and 8 channel HD Audio and the old fashioned PCI interface, but new is the inclusion of a 1000/100/10 Mbit/s Ethernet. And all these facts combined, allow any ODM to make a very diverse motherboard with the usage of just the AMD 890GX chipset. Literally, you pop in memory, a processor, an HDD and a PSU and you'd already have a fully functional and extremely diverse PC. So with the new chipset, AMD can address any market whether that is entry level, mainstream or when you pop in high-speed DDR3 and a dedicated graphics card ... high-end.

Southbridge

SB850

SB710

USB ports

14 USB 2.0 + 2 USB 1.1

12 USB 2.0 + 2 USB 1.1

Serial ATA

6 x SATA 6Gb/s backward compatible with SATA 3.0Gb/sAHCI 1.2

6 x SATA 3Gb/s AHCI 1.1

SATA Ports

6 (can be independently disabled)

6 (can be independently disabled)

FIS-based switching

Yes

-

Integrated Gigabit Ethernet

Yes

-

Clock Generator

Yes

-

PCI Bus support

PCI rev 2.3

PCI rev 2.3

Process technology

TSMC 65nm

TSMC 130nm

Package

23 x 23 mm FCBGA

21 x 21 mm FCBGA

MSI 890FXA-GD70With the chipset out of the way .. it's time to focus on the MSI 890FXA-GD70 motherboard itself. The 890FX has overall higher capabilities than those of the 890GX, such as a faster RAM and broader feature set, but it lacks an integrated graphics solution. This is understandable, considering that it is an enthusiast platform and, thus, quite unlikely to be used in configurations without PCI Express x16 graphics adapters. In fact, the mainboard lays special emphasis on support for multi-GPU configurations, being equipped with five PCI Express x16 slots.

In addition to the five graphics slots, the MSI 890FXA-GD70 has four DDR3-2133 memory slots, six SATA 6.0Gbps ports, one SATA 3.0Gbps connector, dual Gigabit Ethernet, a pair of USB 3.0 connectors, an eSATA port and 7.1 channel audio. These specs are complemented by a number of MSI's own technologies.

The company used Military Class components, namely Hi-c CAPs, Solid CAPs, and Icy Chokes (low-temperature inductors) to improve stability and reliability. Secondly, there is support for core unlocking and overclocking via OC Genie. Finally, the product supports DrMOS, APS (Active Phase Switching) and features the company's instant-on OS known as Winki.

MSI 890FXA-GD70 reviewOf course we were already fond of the 890GX chipset when it got released, but the FX chipset upped the ante a tiny bit more as next to the integration of SATA6G we see an increase in available PCIe lanes allowing 890FX motherboards to become very flexible in their bandwidth needs versus component usage. PCI-Express is key in the AMD 890FX release as we get PCIe 42 lanes at our disposal. Next to that, the chipset will be paired with the SB850 which we already covered in the 890GX review, it supports up-to 14 USB 2.0, up-to six SATA 6G ports and an integrated Gigabit Ethernet controller. This is the basis and infrastructure of your PC, the 890 FX chipset. It's that kind of flexibility that allows ODMs like MSI to make little gems motherboards out of that chipset. MSI's 890FXA-GD70 is loaded with features like the aforementioned, but also USB 3.0, automated overclock options and even five (physical) PCIe x16 slots and even core unlock functionality from within the BIOS.